The Black Hours

Here it is, the apex of all Dead Space Chamber Music: 2000 years of mystery (and counting) where seeds of neo-folk, goth, medieval classical and chamber music are ploughed through with the 21st century perspective.

Starved for music with spirit and meaning? Well now you can hear the oldest surviving English love song, adapted Gregorian Chants, Welsh astral wassailing hymns, Roman funeral masses all on one album. Black Hours is a sound world where the pagan rubs shoulders with high Christian ideals and soaring 20th century guitar lines.

The songs on Black Hours were recorded sequentially through this latest plague. Unquestionably, it's a masterpiece and the distillation of everything Dead Space have worked towards. Moments of staggering beauty (Bryd one Brere) balance on a cello string with crushing heaviness (on the epic centrepieces Mari Lwyd / The Pitt). Light and dark; like the fragile balance of life and death, then and now.

The depth and magic crammed into the corners of this album is astonishing.
From the tolling bells dividing songs - that must be St Mary Redcliffe or St Thomas the Martyr or St John on the Wall or any other church in Avon the band commune with through their historic Dark Alchemy events. The accompanying booklet even feels like old velum, and holds the key to a lot of the album's visual metaphors and signs. There's many nights and worlds in here!

Us leppers can only squint at the Black Hours; an altar of devotion: aesthetic and pure like the visions of yesteryear. Maybe we need to walk the past with Dead Space's sincerity to make a path through the future? It's no secret how much we love this band, and this is everything we could have dreamed of.

Long live the new dark age.